Hundreds Expelled, Many Arrested, For Cheating In India's School Exams 233
Etherwalk writes Sources conflict, but it looks like as many as 300 people have been arrested for cheating in the Indian state of Bihar after the Hindustan Times published images of dozens of men climbing the walls of a test center to pass answers inside. 500-700+ students were expelled and police had been bribed to look the other way. Xinhau's version of the story omits any reference to police bribery, while The ABC's omits the fact that police fired guns into the air.
The H1B mills will put a stop to this (Score:3)
How can they crank out "qualified applicants" at bargain basement prices, if they cant get ahold of disreputable young people with dodgy diplomas for bargain basement prices?
Re:The H1B mills will put a stop to this (Score:5, Interesting)
Having worked with a number of H1Bs from India, I'd say their level of technical competency was pretty comparable to what you'd expect from Americans. Some were horrible, a few were outstanding, most were OK.
There were two big differences. The first was the large number of masters degrees. This is obviously helpful in the visa process, but I don't think a CS or IT master's degree obtained right after college without any intervening work experience means much in practical terms. This is the kernel of truth in the "dodgy diploma" complaint, except there's nothing wrong with the diploma. It's often from a perfectly good program at a US university, it's just gilding the inexperienced lily.
The second big difference is culture. I don't think either culture has an overall advantage, but Indian engineers tend to be can-do and highly conscientious but are often conflict-averse and reluctant to convey bad news. Americans tend to be more assertive in the face of authority and somewhat less likely to tell the boss what they think he wants to hear rather than what he needs to hear. But it's important to realize that engineers are individuals, not cultural automatons. Some Americans are door mats and some Indian engineers are firebrands. And overall engineers from either country are more like each other than they are like ordinary people.
While I think the economic arguments for H1B are bogus, I am grateful to the program for having introduced me to so many interesting people.
My take on the issue of cheating in India is that the stakes are so much higher for some Indians it'd be surprising not to have scandals like this. We Americans see being middle class as a birthright. There isn't a bottomless bit of poverty waiting to swallow us up if we're a few points short of par on our SATs, the way there is for many Indians trying to climb onto the lower rungs of the middle class ladder. But even so *we* cheat plenty. Remember the Air Force officers who shared answers for tests that were supposed to measure their ongoing competency to handle nuclear weapons? That was sheer laziness.
Re: (Score:2)
My experience is the same. H1Bs are pretty much just like American engineers, good & bad. One guy I worked with was really good but I couldn't understand a thing he said. Another spoke great English but couldn't do anything without being micromanaged.
I used to teach a CAD class at a local community college & what I learned was people are the same no matter where on this planet they are from.
I Don't Understand (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you seen those pictures? So... this apparently isn't some sneaky "we couldn't tell they were cheating" issue. This was the examiners apparently not caring at all about blatant cheating going on right in front of them. I mean, you really can't miss this, right? That being the case, why wouldn't the students just hide the crib sheets on them somehow, or cheat in a way that's not quite as likely to involve a family member falling to death from outside the building's third and fourth story windows?
Can anyone give a plausible explanation? I'm genuinely curious.
Re:I Don't Understand (Score:5, Interesting)
Bihar is THE poorest state in India by many metrics. The way out of poverty and squalor for a majority is getting a good score in the Secondary School leaving exams - or minimum pass the damn exam - where you qualify for state / central recruitment, military, admissions to college and so on.
Just like BRICS, India got BIMARU states - Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh to signify 'sick' states - BIMARU in Hindi means 'unhealthy condition'. Think of a BIMARU state as Appalachia or Louisana, but more downtrodden and poor.
Here is an anecdote from my uncle - who did his MSc in Physics way back in the late 1980's from Kanpur, a big city in Bihar's neighboring state Uttar Pradesh - another basket case. The college he studied is DAV College, Kanpur, next to the big cricket stadium Green Park.
During the exams students were three types of service by the local strongmen - mostly wannabe politicians, with support from the caste based political parties...the cheapest tier will allow you to copy from your notes during the exams. The middle tier will allow you to write the exam from your hostel room. The topmost tier they will find someone else who is an expert in the subject to write the exam for you.
These wannabe politicians later represent the state and its constituents in the local and central governments. And now you can understand where are how the criminality of the typical North Indian caste based politician comes from....its inbred. Only the toughest and the most criminal will survive.
I am from Kerala - an entirely different world from the BIMARU States. Think of upstate New York or Pennsylvania - but more tropical. The world described above is alien to us...just like its alien to you.
Re: (Score:2)
Give up testing altogether. Help everyone get to an A+ level.
Some people are ineducable. (Score:4, Insightful)
Give up testing altogether. Help everyone get to an A+ level.
No amount of education is going to cram an understanding of calculus into the head of someone who is incapable of learning calculus.
How do you propose we get those people "to an A+ level" in calculus? This is not something you can "give" someone, so it's not like we are "selfishly withholding" an understanding of calculus from them. They are just incapable of learning calculus.
So your suggestion is rather naive at best, and lacking in critical thinking skills at worst. It's like asking society to help someone with no arms and no legs "get to an A+ level" in juggling. It's just not going to happen, ever.
If you had critical thinking skills, you'd recognize that equality of opportunity does not guarantee equality of outcome, no matter how much time, effort, and money you pour into trying to make it untrue.
Re: (Score:2)
Apparently, the problem is that nobody can learn calculus from a teacher that doesn't know calculus. But those with aptitude can hope that if they cheat their way past the arbitrary cutoff, perhaps they will get the opportunity to actually learn the material later. If they don't cheat, they will have no such opportunity to make it right later, through no fault of their own.
Re: (Score:2)
Apparently, the problem is that nobody can learn calculus from a teacher that doesn't know calculus. But those with aptitude can hope that if they cheat their way past the arbitrary cutoff, perhaps they will get the opportunity to actually learn the material later. If they don't cheat, they will have no such opportunity to make it right later, through no fault of their own.
An education is not something you are given.
An education is something you TAKE.
If your teacher sucks, that's too bad for your teacher, but presumably the book you are using was written by someone who didn't suck. And yes, it will require more work on your part to TAKE your education from the system in that case, but it is *possible*, if it's possible for you to understand calculus in the first place.
The problem in the news article is all the people attempting to shortcut putting in effort, in order to get
Re: (Score:2)
Many text books are actually not that useful without a lecture from a teacher that knows the subject. If you have a half decent library or affordable book store nearby, that problem can be solved readily enough. If not, you might find yourself stuck. Your best bet might be fake it till you make it. That is, get past the test any way you can and then use the increased income or the better school with an actual library that follows to buy or borrow the books you should have been able to read in the first plac
Re: (Score:2)
Your best bet might be fake it till you make it. That is, get past the test any way you can and then use the increased income or the better school with an actual library that follows to buy or borrow the books you should have been able to read in the first place but couldn't.
Any increased income you receive from such a strategy will be ephemeral. You will be fired due to incompetence, and then when people in management within that industry sector get together for lunch and talk (and they will) and you come up in conversation (which if you applied for another position within the same industry sector, you will), and your incompetence becomes generally known, you will be blackballed and unable to find work.
You are much better off resorting to criminal activity with a low probabil
Calculus is trivial (Score:2)
No amount of education is going to cram an understanding of calculus into the head of someone who is incapable of learning calculus.
Calculus is trivial. Anyone within a standard deviation or two of median intelligence should be able to learn it if they have a teacher who understands it. The widespread lack of understanding is just a reflection of how badly we fail, as a society, to educate.
Re: (Score:2)
It's like asking society to help someone with no arms and no legs "get to an A+ level" in juggling.
It's quite astonishing the number of people who believe that that kind of idiocy is some kind of fundamental human right.
Re: (Score:2)
It's like asking society to help someone with no arms and no legs "get to an A+ level" in juggling.
Possibly not juggling. But would you accept a gymnast with no legs [youtube.com]?
Re: (Score:2)
The person to whom I was replying had already posted that same comment multiple times in multiple places in this discussion thread, each time in response to a statement which, in context, makes their statement imply a feeling that people are entitled to an equality of outcome.
I'm sorry (especially if you are Robin Williams having a bad day) that you were unaware of their other postings, or having a bad enough day that you couldn't infer this yourself from the multiple posting locations for their statement o
Re: (Score:2)
And leave out all the thrill and excitement, the sense of purpose & team spirit, bonding etc ? Nah.
Climbing up 3-4 floors from the side of a building and surreptitiously solving and providing answers to your best pal while hiding from teachers, cops etc. balanced on a tiny ledge. Who wouldn't want to do that during their teenage years ?
Re: (Score:2)
Until there's an outside influence that causes it to stop, like employers engaging in their own independent tests where the teste
Re: (Score:2)
You've gone way beyond the true purpose of education in your draconian proposals. The true task of the educator is to help everyone get to an A+ level. Quoting Sebastian Thrun: "Grades are the failure of the education system."
http://singularityhub.com/2012... [singularityhub.com]
Re:I Don't Understand (Score:4, Interesting)
I have to interview these goddamn morons for my company. They're cheaper than domestic employees so there's lots of pressure to bring them on. Whether they're outsourced or H1B'd, they're pretty much a bunch of backwards dumb twats who can barely put a command together. How we end up with them is no surprise. We bring on someone like Cap-Gemini or IBM and they in turn outsource to these dumb shits. I'm so fricking sick of having to fix their dumb mistakes in everything from code to spelling to putting together an awk script to search for a regex. They're useless. This week I have some dumb shit from IBM, another H1B, that is constantly replying with "I'll get back to you" or searching through manuals to find simple answers.
The cert mills have sprung up all over in India have absolutely no incentive to curb the practice.
Re: I Don't Understand (Score:4, Insightful)
It is a genius model: you outsource to Cap Gemini who outsources to cheaper labour from overseas who outsource to free labour from Stack Overflow who does it for brownie points.
Re: (Score:2)
Haha, motivation is a funny thing. In the right person, it can create a Stephen Hawking, or a Bill Gates. In some other people, it creates people you see in the pics.
Re: (Score:2)
The one time to RTFA is now. (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.hindustantimes.com/... [hindustantimes.com]
Has a fucking hilarious picture that you fucking have to see. Made my fucking day.
Re: (Score:3)
On a more positive note, everybody aced the parkour part of the exam.
Is anyone that went to college surprised? (Score:4, Interesting)
I know I'm not. My Indian students would always be shocked during their first test that they were caught cheating. Some were honestly surprised that I wouldn't allow it.
White Man's Method (Score:2)
Maybe we do have something in common with India, after all!
Cheaters never win? (Score:2)
Remember, the best cheaters will be arriving on our shores (United States) within a few short years, thanks to the H1B programs!
Re: (Score:2)
This cheating is not common in the institutes from where H1B visa people are selected. But I guess it's easier to spout bullshit like a dumbass than find out the facts.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, really? Well, instead of calling names and passing out insults, you might have told us exactly where H1B candidates come from. You might even have supplied some source which helps to verify the integrity of those sources. To me - it sounds like YOU are spouting bullshit like a dumbass. "Cheating is not common" probably means that cheating is less flagrant than the instance being reported here.
Re: (Score:2)
This is a freaking 10th class test. It's inconsequential in every way. The exams which do matter (like the IIT entrance exam) are very well administered. There is zero cheating in them. The tests themselves can be said to be useless, but there is no cheating involved. Also, a large number of H1B visas are people who have a master's degree from USA. Their degrees and accomplishments are NOT the products of cheating.
Cheating is not common means that events like these are outliers and they are dealt with very
Re: (Score:2)
"just plain ignorant"
You DO realize that ignorance can be corrected. Unfortunately, stupidity cannot be corrected.
That said, I'm not sure that I believe your assessment. We are talking about a nation with some very backward views and attitudes. Have you watched the movie, "India's Daughter"? I'm not a movie watcher, and I probably wouldn't have watched this one, but the Streisand Effect kicked in when India's government tried to kill the movie. Of course, I don't base my assessment on just the movie -
Re: (Score:2)
This is a freaking 10th class test. It's inconsequential in every way.
If that were true, then there wouldn't be so many people trying to cheat.
Re:Cheaters never win? (Score:4, Insightful)
And, that means what? You've already lost your job, the H1B is filling your position, and even IF he is fired, he'll still be here in the US, applying for jobs where HR files YOUR application in the circular file. Because he was a successful cheater, he got to America, and you lost your job. You're going to feel better somehow, because he got fired from your job? You ain't getting it back!
Re: (Score:2)
H1-B's can not be transferred. The new employer has to file an H-1B petition on behalf of the applicant, all over again. The difference is that this does not count as an application to which the H-1B cap applies. This only applies for a period of 60 days, after which they are subject to deportation.
Getting fired for incompetence if you are in the U.S. on an H-1B is a really bad thing, since the new employer is probably going to wait out the two month clock to make sure that the applicant is still working
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps you haven't noticed that DHS/ICE or whatever they call themselves these days are about 25 million cases BEHIND on deportations. They are actively lobbying to legalize all the illegal alien residents so that they don't HAVE TO deport anyone.
If you care to quibble numbers, you may cite the administration's figure of five million, or you may cite the previous administration's figure of twelve million, or you may cite various other sources. No matter how you slice it, the government is millions of cas
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not as optimistic as you are. The steel industry has been mostly offshored from the US since the '70's. The construction industry has been taken over by illegal aliens. Ever more of our industrial capacity is being sold off and/or offshored. The education system is designed to churn out mindless burger flippers and warehouse workers, instead of engineers, philosophers, authors, doctors, or much of anything else.
A lot of people have already been hurt, but those who haven't been hurt YET simply don't
Re: (Score:2)
Sadly, the horse has left the barn at that point.
Sadly, it's cultural (Score:2, Insightful)
Sadly, it's a cultural thing. The first Indian I met was caught with a forged degree from a University he never went to. Over the years as I've gotten to work and know more Indians, I found an endemic culture of cheating on taxes, cheating on business deals, ripping off customers, degrees bought from diploma mills, and most recently, refusing to honour their own restaurant's gift certificates when you tried to cash them in.
Worse, every single one of these individuals bragged about how they "beat the sy
Fraudulent degrees... (Score:2)
Fraudulent degrees are grounds for immediate deportation, because it means the H-1B petition was perjured.
Re: (Score:3)
If by including the line "#include <stdio.ht>" before each and every call to a stdio function leading to hundreds of compile errors "interferes" with the job of a programmer, then yes. He was the single most incompetent fraud I've ever encountered in my life.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd say the person doing that hired him was an even bigger fraud.
One day I'd like to understand why a company with 30 people needs THREE human resources "people".
Re: (Score:2)
It was a weird language called "C-HyperText". :P
Nah, typo of course. But the first thing I thought after hitting submit was ".hypertext". :D
Re: (Score:2)
gosh that would never happen here (Score:5, Insightful)
Only those funny foreigners cheat. Never happens here in the US...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2... [wikipedia.org]
Blatant cheating (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, so the students somehow got the exam answers. The University actually caught it because SOMEBODY WAS DOING THEIR FUCKING JOB, and reporting it. It went up the chain, and the students got dealt with. It's embarrassing, but it doesn't appear that the university condoned the cheating in any way. I'm sure some people do cheat, and manage not to get caught, but at least they system is set up so that they have to be lucky/sneaky to do so.
Now compare to this situation. People are climbing the walls. It's BLATANTLY FUCKING OBVIOUS that it was happening, so why didn't the institution deal with it before it became a viral web sensation?
I'm sorry, but when parents in Harvard, Oxford, or even NoName U are scaling walls and passing notes to the kids in plain view... then you can make a comparison against the host countries. The "well, other people do it too" explanation has got to be one of the worst type of enablers for sort of behavior, and even so there's simply no comparison.
Re: (Score:3)
Apparently, cheating is rare enough that a single event is worthy of its own wikipedia entry.
Not surprising (Score:2)
It would explain some of the "experts" hired on H-1B visas recently.
Re: (Score:3)
Sounds like a perfect match with employers who post literally impossible qualifications (5 years experience in a 3 year old technology for example) and then when they don't find a local qualified applicant, miraculously find the literally impossible H1-B candidate.
Poach (Score:2)
employers who post literally impossible qualifications (5 years experience in a 3 year old technology for example)
Are you sure they aren't trying to poach someone who worked at the company producing the technology during the two years before release?
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, I am.
hold your horses (Score:5, Informative)
before any of you start saying India this and India that, ban H1B, nuke em all etc. Just remember this is one image and India is 1.3 million Sq mile in area with 29 states, 7 Union Territories, 122 major languages and 1599 other languages, 3 sign languages, 6 major religions, oral literature dating back to 1500 BCE, some of the richest and the poorest people, at least 14 different ethnic groups, 6 national level political parties, 1800 total political parties... etc. India is not " is" India "are". So please take a nuanced approach to everything. Read, learn, present arguments with humility that you know only a small fraction of what needs to be known to even take a position on this country.
Hah! (Score:2)
So we have them beat on square miles, number of states, number of territories, number of sign languages, number of major religions, oral literature, number of ethnic groups, and richest and poorest people!
Obviously we are falling behind on total languages and national level political parties (we could fix that last by getting rid of the electoral college) and total political parties.
Truly, we need to close the "Tower of Babel" gap, the better to not be able to communicate effectively, but you can't always b
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It doesn't matter. We do not have an ICBM yet that can reach North American territories. We can cover the entirety of China though.
So...the case had to be internationally exposed (Score:2)
It's funny (Score:2)
10th class exams are the easiest exams ever! Also, they are TOTALLY inconsequential. In fact, they are optional if your school is affiliated to the most popular board (CBSE). So we are talking about a test that is of so less consequence that you can say "fuck it, I don't need this shit" and everybody is fine with that. And even if you decide to take it, it's so easy that most students cram the entire yearly syllabus in about a month and get decent scores, sans cheating. I really cannot understand why such a
How to REALLY lie with statistics (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember incidents like this when you see lists of countries supposedly being ahead of other countries in terms of test score results... without knowing how much cheating is going on, such lists are usually pretty worthless predictors of real-world results.
Re:How to REALLY lie with statistics (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember incidents like this when you see lists of countries supposedly being ahead of other countries in terms of test score results...
China is number one on most tests, and they openly and systematically cheat by excluding the bottom 80% from even taking the exam. Chinese people are assigned to a hereditary social class at birth, under the Hukou System [wikipedia.org]. About 20%, mostly richer people, are privileged "urban" class, which entitles them free education, healthcare, subsidized housing, etc. The bottom 80% are assigned to the "rural" class (even if they live in a city), and aren't even entitled to food during times of shortage (99% of the 30 million deaths by starvation during the Great Leap Forward were people with a rural hukou). Since Chinese students only take the PISA exam in urban areas, where it is illegal for the poor kids to attend public schools, the results are meaningless. It would be like America only testing students from households with incomes in the top quintile. This is all well known, and there has been a lot of complaints [washingtonpost.com] about the way China cheats on these tests.
The houkou system is a profound injustice, requiring the poor to pay taxes to support a system that only benefits the rich. Most Americans know nothing about it, because Chinese immigrants to America come almost exclusively from the privileged class, and have no interest in criticizing a system that benefits their families.
Re:How to REALLY lie with statistics (Score:5, Interesting)
Cheating has been a serious problem among asian students at every grade level in Southern California, for at least two decades. Not only cheating but a variety of other ploys, such as harassing teachers into giving out extra credit assignments to those who pester them, which can be used to artificially increase their grades. (Extra credit improves grades more than poor test scores bring them down.)
Re: How to REALLY lie with statistics (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in China. Have lived here for 11 years as of this April.
Your claim that hukou isn't used any more is a bald-faced lie.
Furthermore, why would you claim it isn't used in one breath but in the next you claim that it's used to control population?
"But China has too many people"- the standard excuse used by any fenqing when trying to justify a shitty government policy.
Re: How to REALLY lie with statistics (Score:2, Informative)
You can certainly love a country you criticize for certain massive failures like the unjust Hukou system.
Re: How to REALLY lie with statistics (Score:5, Interesting)
Ten years before, it is true. But now hukou is mostly outdated and not used
This is a flat out lie. I have nieces and nephews that live in Shanghai, and have to attend private school because their hukou makes it illegal for them to attend the public school in their neighborhood. My father-in-law had to travel over 1000km back to Sichuan for surgery, because he is ineligible to use the hospitals in Shanghai.
Re: (Score:3)
True, but the reverse can happen as well.
My in-law's cousin was top of his class in a city about 150km from Shanghai. Scoring high on tests, he made it into Shanghai university where he also scored pretty high. This got him and his parents a Shanghai Hukou and a job as finance manager after graduation at the same time.
But yeah, if you're of average intelligence you are ordered to stay where you are. Only the very gifted will be mobile both up and sideways.
Totally different from the USA, where every poor kid
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
FWIW, I'm a native English speaker, and I still get rules about capitalization mixed up. (I suppose taking German didn't help things, though...)
Re: (Score:3)
pretty much (Score:3)
It was obvious even back then t
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:It is a start (Score:5, Insightful)
Predictable response when it comes to India and China. Check out the following article.. Hint: cheating, or at least the temptation, is something universal in human nature.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-... [bbc.com]
On an unrelated note, Chinese students dominate the prestigious International Science Olympiad competitions. You can't cheat in those.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I... [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I... [wikipedia.org]
Re:It is a start (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
You can cheat on the Olympiads. North Korea was caught cheating on the International Mathematical Olympiad twice.
My kids compete in the Math Olympiad, and I helped proctor the test for their school. There was about 60 students, and only one other parent present. Cheating would have been trivial. I could have easily slipped the answers to my kid, or to several kids. I didn't because I didn't know that America's honor was being threatened by NK. I wasn't even aware that NK participated. I will be ready next year.
Re:It is a start (Score:5, Insightful)
cheating, or at least the temptation, is something universal in human nature.
My experience is that most people will cheat if the following list of criteria are satisfied:
1. They think they will get away with it.
Re: (Score:2)
Let everyone get away with it. Try to transmit information. Information does not follow conservation laws: yoy can learn something as you teach it. You gain, the students gain. Use tests as voluntary exercises, where students are free to help each other, and can do the test ad many times ad they want without penalty.
Re: (Score:2)
s/yoy/you
s/ad/as
Re: (Score:3)
Better idea - use sophisticated computer programmed learning + continuous testing. Since students are learning and continually being retested on the material, and the questions are rarely the same for two different students (or even the same student 10 minutes later), nearly all cheating other than just standing there and answering for the student becomes impossible or at least impractical - IOW actually continuously monitor the students progress and help them actually _learn_ instead of faking it.
Of cours
Re: (Score:2)
What you describe is how Khan Academy [khanacademy.org] works.
Re: (Score:2)
2. They do not have confidence in the testing system (eg, 'I'm studying to be a technical writer, so it isn't fair that I need to dissect archaic character descriptions in Romeo and Juliet to pass this english course.')
3. They believe other people cheat ('It's only fair, I'd be at a disadvantage otherwise.')
4.
Re:It is a start (Score:5, Insightful)
Cheaters cheat at every opportunity, they're also the ones who become notorious shysters and con men of every variety, both inside and outside the law. But most people aren't naturally born cheaters. What really brings out the widespread cheating is the perception that the system is rigged. That's why it is so hard to turn a country full of tax fraud, corruption, bribes and so on around, why should I make an honest effort when everybody else isn't?
At least when it comes to certain crimes I think the culture among your friends and family are far more important than what the law says. If your dad is an old Woodstock hippie and your buddies would say "Sure, who hasn't smoked a little pot in college" it's different than if they'd disown you and your bible study group would expel you. Of course they wouldn't support your cheating but if they cheated too and got away with it they won't take the moral high ground, just the practical advice that the first rule of cheating is to not get caught.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Olympiads test the top five or six students of a population. It should be obvious to anyone with even a tenuous grasp of mathematics that countries with a large population to draw from will be favored. That does not provide any useful information on the overall level of education in the country, except that it is sufficient enough for preternaturally skilled students to be identified and coached.
China does well in the Olympics for the same reason, but that doesn't mean that Chinese people are overall more
Re: (Score:2)
It's not only that. When adjusted to population size, India does very poorly, worse than China, Korea & Co. but also much worse that Russia and Romania.
As a former participant (from a small country, so it was easier to get in), I should note that IMO problems are not a good representation of general education in a country. They are very specific, wildly different from both high school and university mathematics. So success on the IMO is much more dependent on the individual's and the country's level of
Re: (Score:2)
It's trivial to cheat on those, there was a case back 15-20 years ago here in Canada were participants were caught cheating in it. The same happened in the pascal math tests. I'm sure that in cases in the last 5 years people have been caught cheating in those tests as well.
Re:It is a start (Score:4, Insightful)
The tests are the problem. When police are involved, your education has ceased to become about knowledge transfer. It is about control.
Tests aren't needed. They are a lazy, inaccurate way of assessing learning. Socrates needed no tests. Buddha never taught with a closed fist holding some knowledge back. Censorship promotes an effete monoculture, not innovation.
Re:It is a start (Score:5, Insightful)
How else will you determine whether someone is worthy of entry to the next level of education or a job? Aren't job interviews tests? Do you just ship software to customers without doing any testing?
These people loved knowledge and were probably already well off. To other people, education is a means to getting a job and therefore, survival.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The tests are the problem. When police are involved, your education has ceased to become about knowledge transfer. It is about control.
what knowledge? 80% of these people are going to get government jobs in India through political connections bribes or reservation. 10% are going to buy a computer engineering degree and end up in the outsourcing business and help create the stereotype of the shallow Indian techie. 9% are going to be unemployed. 1% will do something worthwile in their life .
Re: (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R... [wikipedia.org]
Re:It won't change. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, CHEATING is a cultural thing there. Many feel they have the RIGHT to cheat. [bbc.com]
Cheating on university exams produces inferior quality graduates, that only make the system cumbersome and unpleasant.
However, there are whole industries that capitalize on this phenomenon. H1B visa mills are just one such industry.
Crackdowns on Indian cheating will directly affect their financial bottom lines. Expect hard pushback.
Ask Wallstreet (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course many feels that they have the right to cheat ...
We only have to look at what happened in Wallstreet to remind us that cheating is MASSIVELY PROFITABLE and if they can cheat, why can't we?
I have to agree, it is cultural (Score:5, Interesting)
I did my MS in a top-30 US program. It was a state school and roughly half of the students were from India. This also made roughly half the TAs Indian. Although I come from a country where cheating is common (and professors know it so are out to prevent it), I had never seen such mass-scale cheating and collusion before. You see, the Professors did not expect any academic dishonesty - especially large-scale one and trusted their TAs as colleagues. :) I opened her java file and what do I see: no db stuff at all! No connection to the db, no queries, nothing. Hard-coded in java were the test cases...
Example: in a database class as homework for one week we were to implement a flight booking system that given departure/arrival airports used sql queries to find the appropriate flights with up to one interim destination. You were given the database contents and the test cases you were to perform to confirm your project works properly. I left it for the last minute (naturally) so in my hurry the java UI had a minor bug. I don't remember exactly, but it was not something of consequence, the point of the exercise was the sql. I got 95% and I thought it was a bit strict, but anyway. A few days later while I was browsing my home direct on the student server, I noticed that many students still had world readable home directories. You were expected to manage it yourself, so if you wanted to put stuff there you were supposed to secure it. One of the accessible ones was of the TA that had given me 95% and I checked it out. Sure enough, he was putting stuff there without bothering to change the permissions , and one of the "stuff" was an excel sheet with the results of the exercise. I opened it and found out that every Indian had 98-100%. You might say the were the great students and it was not that hard of an exercise, but I knew at least some of those 100%s as weak students. So I went back to the home directory list and found one of the 100% people that did not look 100% material with an accessible directory and their homework right there
By the time I finished the program I knew very well that Indians considered cheating and plagiarism as the norm, as was helping out each-other with that stuff. Also bullshitting came naturally. For example I was representing an office at the job fair and was accepting CVs from graduate students for a position. I was supposed to give my boss the best candidates for an interview. I was surprised to find out that most of the Indian resumes were almost identical. They had all finished an IIT with a great grade (meanwhile back in my home country the top undergrads could perhaps hope for close to 8.5/10 final grade), had all been placed first in a Mathematical Olympiad of some unknown place (town? village? cricket club? who knows?), had some great professional background in an Indian company, some of them who were in my class had developed a "robust airline reservation system" that was presented as being in line to replace the software at Delta... I could not tell them apart. At all. I mean, I knew we had some Indians who were amazing students. I mean, half of the students were Indian, so about half of the top students were also Indian. But their resumes looked the same, based on them I would either send all of them or none for an interview. In the end, I sent the ones that from our brief interaction seemed to have the best communication/interaction skills, but in any case it is indicative.
A year after I finished, an Indian was caught cheating on a test for the second time by a Professor. He told the student he was getting an F. His reply was "why give me an F when all the class submitted the same course project?". The Professor asked the TA for the submitted projects and found out that almost all Indian students in the class (the number was about 20 IIRC) had submitted a copy of the same project, and the TA had dutifully marked all with an "A". There was talk about expelling all of those involved, but in the end they allowed them to continue with an F in that course. Perhaps after that they started checking up on them...
Perhaps this has not occurred to you... (Score:2)
I hate to sound ignorant but from everything I've heard a lot of pressure is put onto school kids to get a good education and get married (particularly males)
I doubt it's something they can really change with a law or some arrests, it's seems like a deeply rooted cultural thing.
Perhaps this has not occurred to you...
But if you have to cheat in order to get a good score you don't have a good education.
So they have failed in their task, and no amount of cheating will make them any less of an abject failure.
Re: (Score:2)
The education system has also failed them. In some cases the teachers were ineffective and didn't know the material they were supposed to be teaching. Combine that with a single test that makes or breaks your future and mass cheating is an inevitable result. When that many students have friends and family that willing to help them cheat, it's an indication that the test or the surrounding educational system has huge and obvious defects.
Re: (Score:3)
The education system has also failed them. In some cases the teachers were ineffective and didn't know the material they were supposed to be teaching.
If the education system gave them access to textbooks and other course materials, the teacher is irrelevant. The education system did not fail them, they failed themselves.
Re: (Score:2)
What makes you so sure the course materials weren't crap as well? Why would you believe that the same education system that doesn't care if the teacher is qualified or not would suddenly get conscientious about the textbooks?
Re: (Score:2)
What makes you so sure the course materials weren't crap as well? Why would you believe that the same education system that doesn't care if the teacher is qualified or not would suddenly get conscientious about the textbooks?
Besides the fact that everyone was blaming the teachers until I brought up the possibility of autodidactic learning and ignoring the teachers?
Mostly that economies of scale dictate that mass produced textbooks are significantly cheaper than those produced in much smaller quantities, so in order for your assertion to be true, there would have to be an intentional conspiracy to produce shitty text books, and then dump them below cost in order for the shitty text book theory to hold water.
Do you honestly want
Re: (Score:2)
I wondered what this "Xinhau" was. An Indian rip off of Xinhua? But, no, it's somebody who can't spell a word correctly when it's sitting in front of them. Reminds me of some of my students, in fact.
This one wasn't submitted for credit. :)
Xinhua is also a proper noun from outside my usual lexicon and is transliterated from a language I am unfamiliar with, so I am comfortable with getting it wrong once or twice in an informal context. I actually found "The ABC" more interesting, because it took me a little while to realize the site was The Australian Broadcasting Corporation rather than an Australian branch of the American company ABC.
In any event, please excuse the misspelling. But whether you do or
Re: (Score:2)
Why the FUCK would you think there's an Australian branch of the US ABC company in operation ??? I mean...shit.....that is about the dumbest thing I've read today.
I guess the concept of foreign correspondents is foreign to you :-)
Re: (Score:2)
It's a very big company, much, much bigger than "The ABC," and the Australian site called itself "ABC," not "The ABC." Without previous knowledge of "The ABC," it was a logical belief. The fact that the trade symbols were different made me double-check.
But by all means, continue calling me names until you're tired of it.
Re: (Score:2)
They're usually from the very top universities, the kind of which, even if there is talk of reservation for 'minorities', let alone cheating, can lead to people 'self-immolating' [wikipedia.org] in protest.
He was protesting against the Mandal commission reservations in jobs, not universities. We have 50% reservations for low caste people and minorities in every government educational institute. And though many people have complained, most support it.
Re: (Score:2)